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Thursday, 16 July 2009

Like a female Michael Winner

Lashes cast a distracted eye over the Observer Magazine yesterday morning (probably looking for the Business section for further hints on how to train his crack team of lizard ninjas to find money in the streets - his current career plan) and stopped short at this photo of Anna Wintour:

"Elle te ressemble" (She looks like you)

"Uh. Thanks?"

Upsides

She is smiling.

And groomed.

Downsides

Anna Wintour.

Terrifying 80s outfit.

Apparent Adam's apple.

Anna Wintour.

I should probably be grateful. The last celebri-comparison I got was "Meryl Streep but ugly" aged 14 at Quaker school.

Thursday distraction: what's the most unnerving or unflattering comparison you have ever had?

(For those none the wiser, Hazel O'Connor was a boot-faced actress/singer who honked rather than warbled, had one good hit 'Will You' and was in a single shite film 'Breaking Glass' - witness the trailer and my horror at the comparison - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3onzhHCWG8)

I used to get Chelsea Clinton a lot, much to my non-delight. I don't know who I look like know that Chelsea has grown up and gotten plastic surgery. When I was a little girl in the 1980s I also used to get Molly Ringwald. What this tells you is that I am ginger (well, used to be -- it's darkened to auburnish in my old age) and toothy.

At school, bullying types, in the year below me but hard as nails and thought they were oh-so-cool with their Essex facelifts, said to each other as I passed in my purple (first ever grown up - style & price) coat with big faux fur collar - "Oh look its the Queen of Sheba". Um, thanks?(wv is 'ingur - what they were, possibly?)

I used to get Monica Lewinsky ALL THE TIME. Like once a day. And people expected me to *thank* them. And while I appreciate the likeness in that I would happily have given Bill a BJ, she is the trifecta of unattractive, unstylish and fat, and I liked to think I was none of those at the time.

In high school people used to tell me I looked like Ally Sheedy in the breakfast club. I'd like to think I was better groomed than that, otherwise I will take it as a compliment since I also used to get mistaken for a man frequently. Now with kids in tow etc. at least I no longer get called sir.

A blind date (as in we'd never met before, not that he was differently visually abled, although from this story, you'd never know) once told me that I looked like Linda Evans. I was fifteen and she was 80, but apparently it was a huge compliment.

well i think, when i get my act together, i manage to pull off the cool, understated chic of the 'brad-pitt-years' gwyneth... or the calvin klein model that married john f kennedy junior, carolyn bessette...no ones ever made these comparisons to my face, but i like to think they're what everyone's thinking behind my back...the only comparison made more than once to me is peter crouch, the english footballer, but i'm forcing myself not to see it...

Molly Ringwald (I had dyed red hair and unfortunate glasses...)mostly. When I was about 12, a woman in a shop said I looked just like Barbara Streisand, - I must have looked horrified (but actually just confused as I didn't know who she meant) and she quickly followed up with, "except for the nose dearie".I KNOW it was all about the nose..

No one's ever told me I look like anyone. I found a website once where you sent in a photo and it said which well-known people you looked like and to what percent. For me, it said there were no matches. I am evidently not recognisable as human.

When my father saw my Matriculation photo from Oxford, he said I looked like the young Vivien Leigh.

This was absurdly flattering, but a really great thing for a father to say. I have a lot of subsequent rather bad memories of my father, so thank you for reminding me of one of the times he really came up trumps.

More recently, my mother has taken to saying that I am becoming a dead ringer for my Great-Aunt Vera, a pre-war ladies billiards champion who later emigrated to Canada with a woman called Bunty whom she met in the ATS during the war.

I got "hey Ellen" from a bouncer at the pub the other night - next weekend I was (more flatteringly) mistaken for Pink. Evidently Australian males think all women with short blond hair look exactly the same...

My best friend and I once uploaded our photos onto a website that used Computer Technology to tell you which celebrity you most resembled. The site told me that I looked like Natalie Wood. Thank you, I will totally take that, if a computer said it it must be true. Then my friend put in her photo and the computer said "this is not a face".

I am sure I have told this one before. Once Maw was watching Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Vincent D'Onofrio was doing his 'am crazy weird but if you wait I do a clever crazy weird and catch the bad guy' She sat back and said 'I like this guy, he reminds me of you. So bloody stupid acting but underneath can be quite clever.'

When I was little, back in the 50s, my parents maintained that I looked like Prince Charles (who as he is about 2 years older than me was also small at the time). I was never convinced this was a compliment.

One of my former colleagues used to maintain that I looked like BBC reporter Mark Mardell.

I guess I can, just, see the both likenesses though I have to say I don't think they're strong. To me I look much more like my father.